index: int,
) -> None

An IndexField is an index into a, as might be used for representing a correct answer option in a list, or a span begin and span end position in a passage, for example. Because it's an index into a :class:SequenceField, we take one of those as input and use it to compute padding lengths.


  • index : int
  • The index of the answer in the :class:SequenceField. This is typically the "correct answer" in some classification decision over the sequence, like where an answer span starts in SQuAD, or which answer option is correct in a multiple choice question. A value of -1 means there is no label, which can be used for padding or other purposes.
  • sequence_field : SequenceField A field containing the sequence that this IndexField is a pointer into.


IndexField.as_tensor(self, padding_lengths:Dict[str, int]) -> torch.Tensor

Given a set of specified padding lengths, actually pad the data in this field and return a torch Tensor (or a more complex data structure) of the correct shape. We also take a couple of parameters that are important when constructing torch Tensors.


  • padding_lengths : Dict[str, int] This dictionary will have the same keys that were produced in
  • :func:get_padding_lengths. The values specify the lengths to use when padding each relevant dimension, aggregated across all instances in a batch.



So that ListField can pad the number of fields in a list (e.g., the number of answer option TextFields), we need a representation of an empty field of each type. This returns that. This will only ever be called when we're to the point of calling :func:as_tensor, so you don't need to worry about get_padding_lengths, count_vocab_items, etc., being called on this empty field.

We make this an instance method instead of a static method so that if there is any state in the Field, we can copy it over (e.g., the token indexers in TextField).


IndexField.get_padding_lengths(self) -> Dict[str, int]

If there are things in this field that need padding, note them here. In order to pad a batch of instance, we get all of the lengths from the batch, take the max, and pad everything to that length (or use a pre-specified maximum length). The return value is a dictionary mapping keys to lengths, like {'num_tokens': 13}.

This is always called after :func:index.